My journey through the world of e-Learning and knowledge sharing. This blog contains my personal views but is also written from my perspective as CEO of Easygenerator

User generated content; The next trend!

The world of training and development in the enterprise continues to change rapidly. Learning departments can no longer keep up with the demand for ad hoc knowledge sharing and training requests. There is a growing need for regional training in local languages within distributed global enterprises that central teams struggle to support. The big question is: is content created by subject matter experts (User generated content) a solution for this problem? I believe it is or at least will be. But knowing is better than believing therefore we did a little research. We spoke to three companies who are already working or experimenting with user generated content and created a white paper with our findings.

1000 courses created by subject matter experts

AkzoNobel, a leading global manufacturer of decorative paints
and coatings with over 45,000 employees worldwide started with user
generated content over six years ago.

Jeff Kortenbosch, Senior e-Learning Specialist, AkzoNobel:

“As an L&D department you need to realize that a lot of training is developed outside your area of control. Projects happen throughout the company and often have a critical training component. By facilitating an easy to use authoring solution you can have an impact on that process by ensuring a more standardized, cost-effective and sustainable way of working. No more scheduling class-room sessions but learning content available at the employees moment of need. The idea is no different than Wikipedia; our internal experts create the content and the user adoption and feedback can be seen as basic quality control.”

Pilot in over 100 countries with user generated content

Nielsen, a global consumer research and insight company with over 140,000 employees in more than 130 countries worldwide, started a pilot for user-generated eLearning content in Q4 2015.

Kevin Claus, Instructional Design Lead, Nielsen:

“We were developing an internal learning toolkit and looking for an easy to use eLearning authoring tool that is intuitive and not intimidating. Our final toolkit offering is a win-win situation because we can address more learning needs and it’s cost-effective – more people from the business are taking on the training and knowledge sharing role. People may have concerns that training is not their expertise, however we provide users with a toolkit to create their own learning, and we in the learning team are on hand to support, provide guidance and keep an open dialog. We want it to be a success so we’re continuing to listen to their needs and adapt as we learn from them.”

User generated content in corporate wiki

Use Case: Kaplan, a global education provider in more than 30 countries with 19,000 employees, and an early pioneer of user-enabled eLearning.

JD Dillon, Learning and Performance Consultant, and former Director Learning Technology and Development Director, Kaplan:

“The trend towards user-generated eLearning content is inevitable and happening as information moves faster, and learning and development teams have to do more with less. eLearning software such as Easygenerator is making this easy for users and with the right process and workflow, learning teams can manage the process, but ultimately content quality will be determined by the community. It’s becoming a reality but I think a lot of companies are just starting to consider it. “

Download full whitepaper

You can download the full whitepaper here for free. I’m continuing this research. I’m talking to more and more people like Jeff, JD and Kevin. Please contact me via mailATKaspersiro.com if you can give me input as well.